CLOSING ADDRESS, Nov. 4.

Gentlemen of the Provincial Council—

I have to thank you for the careful attention which you have shown in considering the different measures which have been submitted to you. The supplies which you have liberally voted for the public service will be expended with due care. The Bills which you have passed, namely:—

1. The Interpretation Bill;
2. Provincial Auditor’s Salary Bill;
3. Marine Boards Bill;
4. Electoral Districts Bill;
5. Roads Districts Bill;
6. Education (No. 2) Bill;
7. Educational Endowments Bill;
8. Municipal Endowments Bill;
9. Sheep Bill;
10. Cattle Branding Bill;
11. Thistle Bill;
12. Vagrants Bill;
13. Criminals Bill;
14. Appropriation (No. 2) Bill.

I will transmit to His Excellency the Governor, accompanied by an expression of my own concurrence therein; and I trust that all of them will shortly receive His Excellency’s assent.

I shall make the necessary application for the issue of Crown Grants for the further Educational Reserves of country land, which are specified in your schedule to your resolution upon the subject.

As this Council is aware, the attention of the Provincial Government has been specially directed to the consideration of making a Railway to the Bluff. The work is of too serious importance to be entered into hurriedly, and the Government is desirous to view the question in all its bearings before it seeks to commit the Province to its execution. Before the end of the year, I hope to be in possession of information sufficiently definite on all the essential elements which enter into the question of the construction of a line of Railway to connect this town with the harbour, to justify the assembling of this Council for a special session about that time, for the purpose of considering the propriety of engaging in the undertaking; and in case that course should be agreed upon, the manner in which and the means whereby it is to be carried out.

The business of the session having terminated, I have now, Gentlemen, to release you from further attendance, and to declare that this Council is prorogued.

REPORT OF PROVINCIAL ENGINEER
ON PUBLIC WORKS AND ROADS.

Survey Office, Invercargill,
26th October 1862.

SIR,—The operations and expenditures under these heads have been so numerous and diversified that it cannot be expected or desired that I should do more than give a very general sketch of the leading ones only.

Indeed, as no department has ever been organised for the conduct of this branch of the public service, and as my duties connected with it have been chiefly of a consultative nature, some of them have in fact been carried on without my intervention, and no records of any of them have been kept in the department which is controlled by me.

Of the Roads on which works have been or are about to be executed, the principal—after the Campbelltown Road, which is the subject of a separate Report—are, 1st, the Road to the Mataura, and thence to the Longford; 2d, Jacob’s River via Wallacetown; 3d, the Bay Road; 4th, the Road to Oteramika by One Tree Point; 5th, the Great North Road; 6th, the Mount Pleasant Road.

On the first, the culverts have been constructed with proper approaches to them across all streams, and causeways—some of them of considerable magnitude—over all the swampy hollows.

The Road has been formed as far as the Long Bush, and it has been metalled to a few chains beyond the Waihopai Bridge.

These two latter portions of the work are by no means so satisfactory as the remainder. The formation had become a necessity, since much of the land was being enclosed, or was about to be so, and it has been generally well executed; but the removal of the natural surface tends, on most soils, rather to facilitate than to arrest the cutting up by wheeled vehicles, and it would be satisfactory if, in all cases in which it has to be performed, the work could immediately be completed by its being covered with gravel or other material more capable of resisting wear than the unaided sub-soil. But on the Road named, this is unfortunately very difficult, gravel being only available at about three points between Invercargill and the Mataura. Even at the portion between the town and the Waihopai, the want of a better supply within practicable distance led unfortunately to the employment of the rolled shingle of the Waihopai, which, at a hasty glance, closely resembled quartz gravel, but which in fact consisted, to the extent of at least one half, of masses of a soft clay rock, which immediately crushed under the traffic into a mere plastic clay. That part also of the Road nearest to the town passes over a series of small undulations, in parts of which the sub-soil has proved to be utterly unsound, and under the severe trial of this long and wet winter, they have been in a constantly recurring condition of dangerous holes.

As this effect was no doubt in part brought about by the narrowness of the Road, which forced all vehicles into one track, it is now being widened. I trust some improvement may be effected by this, and that the worst portions at least of the Road as far as the Half-way Bush will be gravelled more or less effectually this Summer; but I confess I entertain little hope of seeing any good and permanent Roads in the Province until a more serviceable material for road-making can be made available than the gravel which has heretofore been used, and which, inferior as it is, is too scarce to be reckoned upon for any considerable lengths of Roads.

A considerable number of men are now employed upon this Road in the vicinity of town, and one small party is engaged in constructing four culverts and their approaches on the continuation of it to the Waimea Plain. At the other end of that Plain, near the foot of the Dome Mountain, some other works have also been commenced, but as this Road there joins the Great North Road, these will be mentioned under that head.